Today is the North American release day for Dragon Age II, BioWare's role-playing sequel, which will be available in Europe on Friday. In addition to the retail edition, the game is also available online from the EA Store, Direct2Drive, GamersGate, Impulse, and Steam. Also, the BioWare Social Network offers a high-resolution texture pack for the game. Here's word on the 1.08 GB patch: "Using high-resolution textures requires a graphics card with at least 1024MB video memory. Most of the benefits from the Hi-resolution textures will only be seen if you are able to run the game in DirectX 11." For those interested in sampling the game, a playable demo was released last month.

Don't feel like reading 82 posts of negativity right now but I will say 3 or so hours in I am feeling a bit more like the combat was intended to be played solo and hack-n-slashy. It still works as a tactical RPG, but I am feeling more of that "shoehorning it in" thing than I felt in the demo. Still, on hard the second ogre handed me my ass three times in a row.

Oh, and the game is fucking GORGEOUS on max settings with the texture pack. I mean really, I think it looks stunning both in design and technical aspects.